21st Century Democracy: Using Collaboration Tech to Increase Civic Participation

In this episode, Dr. Kevin Esterling, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at UC Riverside, talks with the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about using technology to make public meetings more inclusive and effective. This is the seventh episode in our 11-part series, Technology vs. Government, featuring former California State Assemblymember Lloyd Levine.About Dr. Kevin Esterling:Kevin Esterling is Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, chair of political science, and the Director of the Laboratory for Technology, Communication and Democracy (TeCD-Lab) at the University of California, Riverside, and affiliate of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). He is the past interim dean and associate dean of the UCR Graduate Division. His research focuses on technology for communication in democratic politics, and in particular the use of artificial intelligence and large language models for understanding and improving the quality of democratic communication in online spaces. His methodological interests are in artificial intelligence, large language models, Bayesian statistics, machine learning, experimental design, and science ethics and validity. His books have been published on Cambridge University Press and the University of Michigan Press, and his journal articles have appeared in such journals as Science, Nature, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behavior, the American Political Science Review, Political Analysis, the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, and the Journal of Politics. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, The Democracy Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Institute of Education Sciences. Esterling was previously a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley and a postdoctoral research fellow at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 1999.Interviewer:Lloyd Levine (Former California State Assemblymember, UCR School of Public Policy Senior Policy Fellow)Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the interviewers and guests alone and do not reflect the official positions of the UC Riverside School of Public Policy or the University of California, Riverside.Music by: Vir SinhaCommercial Links:https://spp.ucr.edu/ba-mpphttps://spp.ucr.edu/mppThis is a production of the UCR School of Public Policy: https://spp.ucr.eduSubscribe to this podcast so you do not miss an episode. Learn more about the series and other episodes at https://spp.ucr.edu/podcast.